


Limnos

by Hyperius (Euregatto)



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dreamsharing, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Late Night Conversations, Mild Language, Post TLJ, Ren ponders his belief in soulmates because what else could explain the attractive woman in his bed, Sexual Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 10:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13075059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Hyperius
Summary: “It’s perfectly alright,” he says placidly. “I will always have time for you.”“You shouldn’t say things like that.”“And why not?”Ren sets himself down at the edge of his bed, raking his fingers through his tousled hair. For a moment the connection is severed, static, a rising hum in the back of his head until she reaches out to him again. Then they plateau together, energy to energy, synched in harmony, if for the first time in weeks since they last saw each other. He’ll take all of what he can get.“Because you’re there, and I’m here.” (Now who’s fault is that?)





	Limnos

**Author's Note:**

> a small reylo thing

   

Kylo Ren is at the very edge of sleep when a sudden shift in his stomach reminds him of falling. He’s seized by panic and then thrown through layers of a briskly forgotten dream until he’s up on his feet, reaching out first with his hand and then with his will, whisking the lightsaber across the room and into his open palm.

For several prolonged moments, even with the illumination of his blazing saber, the shadows are vexing his mind. He recalls memories that are not his own. It's come to his realization that he's wide awake and terrified of breathing, the shadow of Snoke might suddenly realize he’s still alive.

_"Ben?"_

Inhales, exhales, feels the Force around him gathering like a stormfront. Breathes, just breathes.

 _“I didn’t mean to wake you,”_ the voice whispers as the silence settles.

Ren huffs, deactivating his weapon. Sleep had been avoiding him lately, as it does more and more frequently these days; he wonders if it’s Snoke’s consistent presence lurking in every dark recess of the ship (even though he’s dead, _Snoke is dead_ he keeps telling himself to no avail), or the deepening thoughts of Han Solo, that have become Sleep’s dire enemy. “It’s perfectly alright,” he says placidly. “I will always have time for you.”

_“You shouldn’t say things like that.”_

“And why not?”

Ren sets himself down at the edge of his bed, raking his fingers through his tousled hair. For a moment the connection is severed, static, a rising hum in the back of his head until she reaches out to him again. Then they plateau together, energy to energy, synched in harmony, if for the first time in weeks since they last saw each other. He’ll take all of what he can get.

_“Because you’re there, and I’m here.”_

He let everything he could have had slip through his fingers. (Now who’s fault is that?) “I saw my destiny unfolded before me like the splayed wings of a dead bird,” he tells her honestly, refusing to look up, even as she comes into focus through the bond. “Within that moment I made a choice, I had to.”

_“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”_

“Then what?” he prods, absently soothing a wrinkle in his pants.

She goes quiet for a moment. Now the room’s too quiet to be comfortable.

Ren pulls himself upright when Rey's weight presses down beside him. She sits at the edge of his bed, and he can’t see her surroundings, but he can see her clear as day. Her hair’s disheveled and she’s wearing some pants and a shirt he thinks might be someone else’s because they’re one-size too big for her stature.

“I had a dream,” she says quietly, folding her knees up against her chest and turning her shadowed gaze to whatever might be across from her, a window or a lamp or something. From this angle he can see how her hair has grown, how rigorous training has defined her muscles and her strength. “It’s difficult to get back to sleep,” she continues when he doesn’t answer.

 _So why did you come to me?_ He doesn’t ask because she probably doesn’t have an answer.

Instead, he looks at her from the corner of his eye. “Was it a vision? A bad memory, perhaps?”

She has the radio switched on in the background; he can hear the lyrics now, faint but insistent, a song that might be popular somewhere else in the universe. He doesn’t recognize it all the same. The song sings of soulmates and the irony is so benevolent in context Ren almost laughs.

“My parents,” she admits.

“I see.”

They don’t touch. Ren wants to lean towards Rey and take her shoulders or her hand or something. He doesn’t know what he wants. Not right now, at least. She never quite reaches for him anymore unless she wants to make conversation for the sake of conversation and convince him to turn. He thinks it’s effectively getting under her skin.

“Were you dreaming?” she asks him quizzically, searching for a tidbit of information he isn’t quite sure she’ll manage to get out of him. Not at this rate, anyway.

“No. Not really.” He feels his chest swell when she turns her head to look at him. A vast division has been rifted between them for weeks now, subsumed by his rise as Supreme Leader and by her, rising, rising to meet him. After a moment he exhales, and tells her finally, “I think I only dream when you do.”

“You should have come with me.”

 _There it is._ “That’s not going to happen,” he replies, diverting his attention to the room, to the shadows subsuming the length of his vision. Then he's back, gazing intently at her jawline, at her face, thinking about something incomprehensible to her. Maybe he's wondering what it would be like if she was on his side, an Empress. After another pause he adds, almost reluctantly, “You should have taken my hand.”

“You know I couldn’t do that, Ben.”

Ren reevaluates his previous concerns with the existence of soulmates. His hands itch for that connection with her, despite his adamant decision on keeping people as far from his heart as possible. Yet she gives him a look that makes him hate poets and writers and singers who claim the truth of soulmates, that makes him hate how his subconscious craves to be with someone who will no doubt become his undoing.

He swallows dryly.

“Can you take my mind off of it?” she asks, a hand on his leg and he forgets how to blink.

“Tell me where you are, then.”

“It won’t be that easy,” comes her next quip, her body turning to fully face him now. “In case you haven’t noticed, _Snake_ , you have a tendency of provoking my wrath.”

“I’ve come to learn I’m good at provoking other things out of you as well.”

She hits him in the shoulder and it actually _hurts_. He’s reflecting on the nights they spent together in their downtime, reaching for each other through their bond. Fingertips, pressing, ghostly against the fire. Ren reaches over and tucks a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. Sparks drag, ice spreads beneath their touch. He’s come to believe that she’s a soulmate in her own right, if he believed in soulmates.

“Most of my anger is now your burden to bear,” she hisses, leaning into him, his arm sliding around her back and his lips, pressing to her forehead only briefly. He lets himself think about that song, about the precise coincidence of becoming coincidental. He’s fixated on how loud her spirit calls when they connect, contrast to the silent ravine of space. When she speaks he listens and he can’t imagine doing anything else.

After another moment she scoffs. “They’d give me Hell if anyone caught me with you like this.”

“There are plenty of other compromising positions I’d be willing to try.”

“In your dreams,” she snaps back, but she makes no move to push away from him. Outside his window, Ren sees a TIE Fighter on patrol, passing along the backdrop of space. Rey leans her head fully into his shoulder. Inhales, breathes.

Ren thinks that exhaustion is his mortal enemy right now. “I don’t think I can take back what I’ve done,” he utters, entwining their hands, “or what I’ve seen and what I’ve said. You understand that this is the path my destiny showed to me and it is the destiny that I walk without regret.”

She sits up to look at him. He brushes the pad of his thumb over the plush of her lips. “Not even one?” she murmurs, her forefinger curiously grazing the definition of his jaw and catching, if only briefly but just long enough, on the edge of his old scar. His breath hitches, thinking about her and nothing but _her_ while his chest is desperately pillowed with anticipation.

“Only one,” he amends, leaning in, power and desire and wondering, simply intrigued by this, by _her_ , “I wouldn’t trade this for anything, not even my own sanity. I only want you, Rey, no matter who I’ve become or where I might be.”

“Ben…”

They lean into each other, and when they kiss she shudders and he falls into her like the gravity of a star. She hums against him, ebbing into sweet, muted moaning when his fingers find the soft expanse of flesh under her shirt. In return she holds him, her hands clutching the bare of his ribs, her knees dragging up along his waist. She has a way with him that is matched only by the natural deconstruction of planets in the cosmos. Raw, powerful, inevitable.

When they part he rests his head against her chest, feels the Force and her life and her everything rushing under the surface of her skin. His hands weave into hers, fingers slowly entwining, pinning her to the bed and committing this moment to memory.

_“Rey.”_

He listens to her heartbeat like music on the radio.


End file.
